noun

• The quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
• (rhetoric) A writer or speaker's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions such as pity.
• (literature) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
• (theology, philosophy) In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.
• Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.